What good lies in the isolated knowledge of one who loves, one who finds himself in love? ……………………What good is it to me that you ……………………love me? The truth is irrelevant when it comes to individuals.……………………What a useless thing—to be loved.

But to feel it, ah!All souls, all spheresof energy and matterwere created to seek it.……………………We bathe ourselves in the……………………hope to find it:……………………The feeling,……………………not the truth behind it.

For what is a colorother than the thing we see?No reality can go beyond a belief,becoming inconsequential.

Maybe they don’t know it,maybe they can’t understand,yet nobody really wants to be loved,what they want is to feel as if they were.

Steve looks rested, has all his teeth and his shirt is immaculate; you would never in a million years think this guy was on welfare. He’s my brother and we meet once a year for my birthday treat at the restaurant of his choice. This year, he’s chosen Olive Garden.

Aside from this splurge, I supplement his upkeep with a monthly check which he demands with the punctuality of a landlord. I’ve paid him thousands in what might be called blood money.

What else can I do? Certainly, no person in his right mind wants to end up like him. According to his caseworker, he’s anti-social. His life has been one long con job though he was shrewd enough to avoid jail by making all his victims those who loved him; people who’d never go to the police.

“You look good,” I tell Steve knowing how important his appearance is to him even at this stage of the game. One of the symptoms of his disorder is narcissism.

“Really?” his shady earnestness is still winsome. Another trait that marks his pathology is charm.

That compliment launches him into his routine diatribe about loneliness and the crushing indignities of subsidized housing. His room is not even equipped to handle air conditioning. In this heat, I can’t help wincing. It’s too painful for me to use the word ‘poverty’ when I tell others about him. ‘He’s living on SSI’ dilutes the brutal reality.

He resorts to a hard sell. “Why can’t I move in with you? A month at the most till I’m on my feet, again?” He’s sixty now. I’ve heard this for ten years, since he went through the last of what my parents left him.

“You can’t move in with us,” I tell him. “Eric would never allow it.” Eric is my husband.

“You have all that space, for God’s sake!” he says accusingly.

“What can I tell you? Eric would leave me. I can’t destroy my marriage.” I hold fast to what Eric told me, once. How a parasite’s overriding instinct is always to devour its host.

We finish our lasagna and I leave the restaurant feeling mainly relieved that I won’t have to see him again for another year.

When I get home, my two cats greet me. Except for them, I live alone. My husband died two years ago, but Steve doesn’t need to know that.

The three older boys hanging out behind our school said that they’d killed a rabid dog at the abandoned air force base. “We slashed at him until I got him in the stomach,” one of them said.

“Did he bleed out?” I asked, trying to sound cool.

“No. He didn’t fucking bleed out,” the tallest boy said, tossing a pocketknife between his hands. “I threw my knife and hit him between the eyes.”

I stared at his knife in awe.

“There are tons of rabid dogs there. Twenty bucks to watch us kill one.” He looked at me and then at my friends, Kyle and Thomas. “Or are you a bunch of pussies?”

“I’m no pussy,” Kyle said.

Thomas and I nodded in agreement.

The tallest boy slid the knife into his pocket and then unrolled a pack of cigarettes from his shirtsleeve. He flicked a lighter on in one motion, something I couldn’t do even after practicing all Fourth of July. “Tonight then,” he said, taking a drag.

When I got home, I counted my money slowly. It had taken me all summer to save that much, and I wanted to feel like it belonged to me a little longer. Then I looked through my closet for a pocketknife my grandfather had given me. All afternoon, I threw it at a picture of a menacing dog until it stuck every time. Then, I oiled and sharpened it until it gleamed.

After dinner, Thomas, Kyle, and I rode our bikes to the base. Warm air filled my shirt as I rode, making me feel more muscular than I really was.

When we got there, we climbed the chain length fence, stopping every few seconds to look for a pack of dogs or to hear the sound of distant growls, but we didn’t see or hear anything. As we headed down the alleyway between the cement buildings, glass from broken windows crunched under our feet. When we reached the first intersection, we saw two of the older boys. One of them held a crowbar against his shoulder.

The boy looked at it and then back at us. “We’re not going to fuck you up, kid.” He laughed.

“Then why do you have it?” I asked.

“To get in the building. Do you think they leave the doors unlocked?”

I looked at Kyle who shrugged. It made sense, but watching the boy swing it from one shoulder to the other made me nervous. I put my hand in my pocket so I could feel my grandfather’s knife.

When we reached them, they opened the door to the base hospital. It had damage around the lock from where they’d pried it open. “You guys took long enough,” the one with the crowbar said. “We started without you.”

“What do you mean?” Kyle asked.

“We cornered one in the examination room.”

We walked down a hallway with peeling beige paint. Pipes running along the walls leaked rust onto the floor. I kept glancing behind me at the boy with the crowbar until the one leading stopped outside a door. He turned and put out his hand. “Money.”

Kyle and Thomas gave it over. My hand was deep in my pocket, holding the knife.

“Dog first.”

“Money.” The boy with the crowbar said, stepping closer.

I gripped the knife tighter, feeling the grain of the handle against my palm. “No dog. No money.”

I could see Thomas out of my peripheral vision, imploring me to hand over the money, when an animal’s sharp yelp came from the room. Then the tallest boy called from the other side of the door—“Get the fuck in here.”

I expected something snarling, growling, foaming at the mouth, something horrible in need of killing. Instead, there was a metal exam table where the tallest boy stood over a dog. It was on its side with a pillowcase over its head. Its golden fur was mottled with blood, and there was more blood smeared on the boy’s shirt, hands, and pocketknife.

“I can’t do it,” he said. He was pale, his eyes watery. I stepped forward, confused, thinking it had already been done, but then I saw the fur trembling, small cuts along the dog’s stomach, and one long cut along the table’s edge where blood and insides were pooling out.

“This is fucked man,” Kyle chocked. “Let’s bail.”

Thomas grabbed my sleeve, but the dog whined, a sad weak cry, an agonizing plea for help. The pillowcase rose slightly and then fell back. I pulled my hand out of my pocket and shook Thomas off. Their shoes squeaked as they ran back the way we came.

“Fucking end it,” the one with the crowbar said.

“I can’t. I tried.” The tallest boy dropped his knife and rubbed his hands through his hair.

The one with the crowbar shook his head. “This was your scam. You fucking deal with it.” He left and the other boy followed him out, leaving the tallest boy, the dog, and me alone.

When I took the pillowcase off, the tallest boy looked away. The dog wasn’t rabid. It was old and scared. It had a collar—the nametag said Henry. I rubbed his ears, then tried to lift him, but there was no way I could get him to a vet. There was too much blood, and he cried and shook no matter how I tried to carry him. I took my knife out and tried to do it fast, but I didn’t know the best way.

Afterwards, the tallest boy took off his shirt, giving me something to wipe the blood on. It was all the way up my forearms. Then he bent over and started heaving.

I didn’t know if I should reach down and put a hand on his back to comfort him. I only knew that I didn’t want to.

“What a shame,” Nonna said when I arrived at her place after working at the family restaurant. “Mary Muldoon just called. Drunk as a skunk, asking if I knew where her husband Jim was and quite annoyed at the Happy Garden Chinese Restaurant. Said they were sending her pork fried rice and egg rolls at least three times a week. Claims she never ordered a thing.”

“Where’s her husband?”

“Molly, he’s dead. Has been for years. She found him in the living room around dinner time. Massive heart attack.”

“Oh, that’s terrible.”

“She must be having blackouts and forgetting things. Or she’s imagining that they are delivering the food. Mary has squash rot. Poor thing. Her mind’s all messed up.”

“What’s ‘squash rot’ ?”

“It means your brain is rotted from too much alcohol. When she drinks, Mary gets delusional and hallucinates.”

“She eats at our restaurant once a week and never says much unless it’s to complain. She’s nasty to me. She told my father that I’m a ‘clumsy oaf,” and said that I should be washing dishes instead of serving food.”

“You’ve got to have compassion, Molly. She’s been through a lot and can’t help herself. Addiction to alcohol is a terrible thing.”

“I don’t think it’s an excuse to be mean, Nonna.”

I excused myself, saying I had homework, and went to her bedroom where I would hang out until my parents closed the restaurant.

Nonna thought it would be charitable of us to visit Mrs. Muldoon around Christmas time.

We walked precariously up the steps of Mrs. Muldoon’s front porch on a late afternoon in December. “She’ll slip and fall on this snow,” Nonna said. About two inches had fallen that morning. “Grab that shovel against the house and clear a path from her door down to the street.”

It didn’t take me long; the snow was light and airy. I shoveled while Nonna gave commands. As we were stomping our feet and about to ring the doorbell, the door opened. “Aren’t you going to clean the curb, too?” Mrs. Muldoon said to me. “I like to walk on the street ya know. The slobs next door never clear the sidewalk.”

“Of course she will,” Nonna said, and then to me, “Molly, just finish up that little bit while I go inside with Mrs. Muldoon. Then join us.” Mrs. Muldoon held the door as Nonna entered.

“You’ll do a good job, won’t ya?” Mrs. Muldoon said with a fake smile. “Not make a mess of it like you do sometimes at the restaurant.”

As the door shut, I gave Mrs. Muldoon the finger. Even though she didn’t see my gesture, it gave me pleasure. I shoveled the curb, making sure to leave just a bit of snow on the curb, hoping she might slip.

I found the two of them standing in the archway that led to the living room. Nonna was oohing and aahing over a silver aluminum Christmas tree with a color wheel.

“Well the damn thing ought to be. Paid a pretty penny for it. At Sears, ya know. The girl in the store, a pudgy midget, said it was a specialty item.”

“Oh, a specialty.” Nonna winked at me. “Well it’s beautiful, Mary. Now why don’t we go into the kitchen and enjoy some coffee while we eat the cookies I brought you.”

“I don’t know why they call it a specialty item. They’ve been around for years,” I said.

“Well it’s special to me,” Mrs. Muldoon snapped. “Where are the cookies, Agnella? I could use something sweet to get rid of the bad taste in my mouth,” she said, looking at me. We walked into the kitchen.

“I wrapped a few up and put them in here.” Nonna patted her black leather handbag.

“Well I would think you could give me more than a few. What are you? Cheap?”

Nonna laughed. “Mary, you got the diabetes to worry about.”

“Was she really a midget?” I interjected.

Mrs. Muldoon looked irritated.

“Molly’s asking about the salesgirl in the department store.” Nonna smiled at me.

“I know what’s she’s asking, Agnella. Yes, Molly. Or a dwarf. I don’t know what ya call them nowadays. But nice enough, she was. And quite knowledgeable. She told me the tree was made in some town in Wisconsin. Would be an heirloom in the future. I said to her, ‘I don’t care about any heirlooms, dear, and I don’t care about the future. I haven’t got a soul to leave it to.’ And don’t ya know, the midget said to me, ‘I’m sorry.’ I said, ‘About what, darling?’ And then she said, ‘That you haven’t got any children.’ I laughed and told her not to worry. Children could be a pain in the arse. Isn’t that right, Molly?”

Mrs. Muldoon almost slipped on the red-brick linoleum floor, but Nonna was able to grab her arm and steady her into a chair. The kitchen smelled like pine. Nonna explained later that the smell was from all the gin that Mrs. Muldoon drank.

Nonna brewed coffee in the percolator, after rummaging through the disorganized mess of cupboards. Mrs. Muldoon was silent, her eyes dreamy, looking out the window above the sink.

“Mary, where’s the sugar?”

“Look on top of the refrigerator.”

“Crazy place to put it,” Nonna said, taking the yellow sugar bowl and placing it on the table.

“It’s starting to snow again,” I said, following Mrs. Muldoon’s eyes. “Guess you’ll have to find someone to shovel for you later on, too.”

“It is, and isn’t it pretty? Do they still make snowflake cutouts in school, Molly? I used to love Christmas time when I was a tot.”

“Mrs. Muldoon, I’m a senior in high school. They make snowflakes in elementary school.”

“What a shame,” Mrs. Muldoon said. “People at every age should make snowflakes. That’s a joy of Christmas. Don’t you agree, Agnella?”

Nonna was pouring the coffee and arranging the anisette cookies on a plate. “Yes, Mary. Snowflakes should be appreciated at every age.” She opened the refrigerator and sniffed the small carton of cream. Her nose crinkled. “Mary, the cream’s gone bad.” She poured it down the sink and ran hot water. “We’ll just have to have our coffee black.”

“Let’s have a gin and tonic instead,” Mrs. Muldoon said. “Molly, too. She’s a senior in high school now,” she said, over-enunciating and smirking. “Too old for snowflakes.” She laughed.

“We’re having coffee. No alcohol. Wouldn’t go with the cookies,” Nonna answered.

“Snowflakes form in the Earth’s atmosphere when cold water droplets freeze onto dust particles. The ice crystals create myriad shapes. No two are alike,” I said. “I think that’s more wondrous and beautiful than anything we could create with scissors and white paper.”

Mrs. Muldoon laughed. “Aren’t you a whippersnapper. And all those big words: myriad and wondrous.” She humphed.

Nonna set the coffee and plate of cookies in the table center. “Molly’s very smart. She got a perfect score on her SATs. Her IQ is 148, almost genius level.”

“Whatever that means,” Mrs. Muldoon said. “What else do they teach you? Do they teach you to count your blessings? Do they teach you your catechisms? Do they teach you the Ten Commandments, the Our Father, and Hail Mary? Now those are valuable lessons.” She picked up rosary beads and laminated novenas that were on the table. “Faith is most important, Molly.” She shook the beads.

“Yes, of course they teach us those things, Mrs. Muldoon. The sisters have to explain all of that to us. I’m not sure I believe any of it.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Muldoon said. “So sacrilegious. And at this time of year.” She tsk-tsked. “Now there’s a big word for you.” She laughed and sipped her coffee, then glared at me. “You are not smarter than God, Molly.” She placed her cup down firmly. A bit of the coffee spilled over the rim.

“I think that Molly is saying she’s a free thinker,” Nonna piped in.

“A free thinker? What a bunch of malarkey. I don’t even know what it means.”

“It means she makes up her own mind about what she believes. She’s an independent young woman.”

Nonna laughed. When Mrs. Muldoon left the kitchen, Nonna whispered to me, “Go into the living room and get me a few of those see-through balls from the tree.”

I did just that, bringing her two translucent balls and one red one. “I like the red one,” I whispered. Nonna wrapped them in napkins and stuffed them in her bag, which she clasped shut just as we heard the toilet flush down the hall.

Mrs. Muldoon returned. “I was just thinking about Vivian Vance. It’s sad that she died. Oh, how she used to make me laugh.”

“Who’s Vivian Vance?” I said.

“Ethel Mertz. You know. From I Love Lucy. Now that was a funny show. And Lucille Ball. What a riot!” Nonna smiled.

“God bless the people who make us laugh,” Mrs. Muldoon said.

“I wonder what a dead body looks like. I’d love to see one,” I said.

“What an odd thing to desire.” Mrs. Muldoon pursed her lips.

“It’s sad that Vivian Vance died, but I don’t see why her death is any more tragic than the death of anyone else,” I answered. “Do you know there’s approximately 153,400 deaths per day, or a little more than 100 per minute? Just think of how many people died while we’ve been sitting here. We are all specks of dust floating in an enormous universe.”

“Your granddaughter is getting too big for her britches. Imagine? ‘Specks of dust.’ I don’t even know what she’s talking about half the time. Wanting to see a dead body, too? Where does she come up with these things? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” She took a sip of coffee and looked out the window. The black bark of a tree cut through a gray square of sky.

“Don’t mind her, Mary. Molly’s just a thinker.”

“I could tell her a few things to think about.” Her “things” sounded like “tings,” and her “think” sounded like “tink.” I was going to correct her but Nonna said, “We should get going. The snow is falling. And Molly’s got homework to do. Don’t you, Molly?”

“Yes, Nonna. And I want to add some more ornaments to our Christmas tree so it can be just as beautiful as Mrs. Muldoon’s.”

Mrs. Muldoon guided us to the door, commenting some more about my poor attitude, and then as we walked home, Nonna said, “Such a shame. An old woman drinking herself to death.” She stopped suddenly and turned to me. “You’ve got to learn to hold your tongue. Learn not to be so fresh.”

When we hung the ornaments on our tree, Nonna said, “She won’t notice them missing. And it’s a shame not to have them appreciated. Don’t you agree, Molly?”

“Yes, Nonna.”

Later, as I lay on Nonna’s bed doing homework, I picked up the phone and called the Chinese restaurant.

“This is Mrs. Muldoon again,” I said. “Send me over an order of pork fried rice, egg rolls, and add some beef broccoli this time. And you’ll hurry it up, won’t ya? I’m so hungry I could eat a nun’s arse through a convent gate.”

If he had been sitting on a lazy cloud, looking down at the world, it might almost have looked nice. The patchwork of rice paddies could have been a green quilt thrown over the earth. Henry’s rifle hung heavily from his shoulder, and silently he wept—knowing that I could not weep aloud.

Guns and smoke were tattooed over his mind, blurring the image of five young faces. Even through the haze of regret, he remembered the way the eyes had looked as were jolted out of this world by soldiers’ bullets. Death should be peaceful, a gentle settling, the end to a long journey. Not accompanied by groans and shouts. Not full of agony like flares erupting in their skin. Not pain. That wasn’t the way to die—certainly not at eighteen years old. Damn kids were to young to grow beards. Now they’re dead because their skin and uniforms were the wrong colors.

Henry walked on, surveying the land and the approaching huts, his head held high, his pride evident, and his wretched guilt consuming him more quickly than war. The civilians scattered as he stepped through the settlement. He watched a woman gather up her child and set off in the opposite direction, leaving him only a hollow glance.

That’s how he felt. Hollow. Like a rotted tree. I’m a medic for God’s sake. I’m not a soldier. Henry slipped into an empty hut. He leaned his rifle against the wall and unfastened his bandoliers, letting the deathly spirits slip away from his body. But he could not dispel them from his presence. They lingered—as though they were meant for him. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and held a cigarette to his lips, frowning at his shaking hands and the lighter that refused to catch flame.

Inhale.

He tasted the smoke before exhaling. It didn’t taste like blood.

He inhaled again.

“…nineteen civilians…” The lieutenant’s shrewd voice over the crackling radio. “What should I do with them, sir?”

Henry held the cigarette a few inches from his mouth, waiting for their company commander’s response.

Four seconds later, the cigarette struck the floor. Twenty seconds later, Henry had gathered his equipment and was stepping out the door, the cigarette still burning in the dirt. Twenty-two seconds before the daytime light struck Henry’s smoke-filled eyes, the steady voice of the company commander had come hissing through the radio:

“Kill anything that moves.”

A small group of women and children stood outside the hut, huddled together as though that could protect them. Among them was the woman who had glared at Henry as he’d entered the settlement. She was still holding her child, but her expression had lost its edge. She stood and shook as badly as Henry’s hands.

If he had counted the souls assembled before him, he would have counted nineteen.

If he had counted the goose bumps crawling steadily over his body, perhaps he would have been distracted long enough that he would not have seen as U.S. soldiers slaughtered nineteen women and children of the Quang Nam province. Perhaps he would not have heard as they shrieked and begged for help, groveling in the dirt as the bullets took from them all they had left to give. Perhaps he would not have watched them drowning, throwing up their hands and flailing in misery.

A few moments later, they were dead.

From the silence and despair, emerged a cry—the piercing squall of a newborn. The soldiers watched as Henry stepped toward the child, picking his way over bodies, and pieces of bodies. He took the child in his arms and listened while it screamed. A rough necklace was settled around the fatty neck of the infant, a tarnished charm reading, Rose. Gently, so gently, he laid the child on the ground and pressed his rifle to its belly. Tiny hands grasped the barrel, as they would grasp a toy.

Henry looked down at the desolate child, surrounded by a halo of death. And he knew that his green uniform meant nothing drenched in blood.

His uniform meant as much as Old Glory flying over a cemetery, as much as an Uncle Sam poster in a high school cafeteria, as much as applause for a veteran who hears gunshots in every car’s backfire.

It meant nothing.

He pulled the trigger and walked away, leaving a dead baby Rose and her dead mother in the Quang Nam Province. Alongside the remains of his humanity.

Barry hated cell phones. He shuddered when trapped in a crowd, people yacking at maximum decibel, as if everyone within earshot was buzzed to hear about dysfunctional families or drunken golf outings. He detested camera phones, users blocking sidewalks, or rudely delaying meals to photograph the perfect tuna melt. He considered “selfies” an addiction for the self-obsessed. It saddened him when couples, heads tilted crotch-ward, abandoned human interaction in favor of text-talk. He’d scream “pay attention” at obtuse blockheads as they attempted to simultaneously type and walk.

But the biggest reason Barry hated them? They’d murdered his wife. Diana was headed downtown in her Toyota Prius when sixteen-year-old Becca Hughes, oblivious to the road while texting a friend, ran a stop sign and killed them both.

To add insult to injury, Barry learned of Diana’s demise via a cell phone. While he refused to own one, Barry’s publicist carried the newest Apple anything, which she handed him after he’d delivered a speech to the Missoula, Montana Rotary Club. “Barry, you need to take this, it’s your brother-in-law,” she said, her complexion as white as her iPhone 6. Standing in a dark corner of the Holiday Inn, the air reeking of moldy carpet and baked chicken, a sniffling voice informed him that the only woman he’d ever loved wouldn’t be picking him up at the airport in Portland tonight.

Four days after Diana’s funeral, his relatives and friends leaving him to roam an empty house, Barry got uncharacteristically drunk. He enjoyed a glass of wine now and again, and two or three times a year he might imbibe a cocktail or port. But he prided himself on moderation; maintaining his academic mind for peak performance. With his brain now a snarl of grief and disbelief, he wanted to turn it off. Fog the room. Martinis were his first choice, which translated to shots of vodka since he had no vermouth. Next, his oldest bottle of Cabernet. That’s when he remembered the joint, a salacious birthday gift from a friend, stuffed away in the bed stand months earlier. He and Diana had joked about how they’d relive their college years by getting high and listening to Dark Side of The Moon. He toked-up with a long wooden fireplace match, coughed like a lung cancer victim, and stumbled into his backyard.

Barry stared at the new Weber grill, recalling the inaugural barbecue a month earlier, Diana donning her silly chef’s apron, Spank the Cook, which had made him laugh. He fell into a lounger, a quarter-full bottle jangling in his right hand, joint in the left, until the wap wap of a bouncing basketball brought him to his feet. Pushing aside the lilacs he watched the neighbor boy shooting hoops in his driveway. He’d known the kid since birth, but never really paid attention to children. Shirtless and adolescent-skinny, Barry guessed the boy was fourteen or fifteen, wearing calf-length neon green shorts, and a flat-brimmed baseball cap pulled back gangsta-style on his head.

“Hey,” Barry mumbled through the bushes.

Startled, the boy said, “Oh, hi Mr. Wells. Sorry, was this bothering you?” He glanced at the ball.

“Terence.” Barry nodded. “You grew up fast. How’d you like to make a hundred bucks?”

“A hundred dollars?” Terence looked at him with the proper suspicion due when an adult offers a child money. “Sure, I guess. I mean, what do you want me to do?”

Barry frowned at the empty bottle, flinging it across the lawn. “I have to clean out my house. My wife, she died, and I have to get rid of some of her stuff. I c-can’t…I can’t look at it.” A softball-sized groan rose from the bottom of his lungs, and he dropped head-to-waist to vomit.

Barry took a swig, and spat a yellow stream to clear his mouth. “Thanks. All good. Anyway, I could use your help packing up stuff, and like I said, a hundred bucks.”

“Mr. Wells, I know about your wife. I was at the funeral with my folks. I’m so sorry. I really liked her. She’d always come out and talk to me whenever I mowed your lawn. I’ll help, and you don’t need to pay me. You want to do it now?”

For the next hour they packed Diana’s belongings into the back of his Audi SUV, Barry sometimes stopping to inspect a piece of clothing, visualizing it on her. He found a stack of fashion magazines, ripping pages to wrap bottles of perfume and keepsakes to be kept. Sometimes he’d pause to inhale her scent before carefully placing them in boxes to be moved to the basement.

“You drive,” Barry said, tossing the keys. “We’ll go to Goodwill.”

“Me? I can’t drive a car that nice. And besides, I don’t have my license yet.”

“Do you know how to drive?”

“Yeah, my Dad taught me, and I’m going to take the test next month. But I’m not legal.”

Barry sucked on the joint, and made the sign of the cross in front of Terence. “By the power vested in me by the State of Oregon due to the extreme circumstances we now find ourselves in, I pronounce you a legal driver for the next two hours. There. Drive.”

“Wow,” Terence said, and shook his head. “Works for me.”

Barry stopped to pull a six-pack of Pale Ale out of the refrigerator and popped a top as he slumped in the passenger seat. “Speed it up, I’m not Miss Daisy,” he joked sadly as they cruised ten miles an hour under the speed limit. “What’s your story? You’re what, a sophomore?”

“Junior, this fall.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Sort of. Well, not really. There’s a girl, and I like her, but she’s not my girlfriend.”

Barry took a slug of beer. “Teenage romance is the best. Tell her how you feel. Women like that. It goes too fast, so get on it. I met Diana in college, loved her from the minute I saw her, but I was shy. I’d watch her, thinking no way she’d be interested in me, until she finally asked me out. If I could do it again I’d walk up to her the second I saw her and tell her I loved her. That way I’d have had a little more time with her.” Barry belched and shook his head. “Still not sure what she saw in me.”

“Aw, Mr. Wells, what do you mean? You’re like a famous writer and professor, aren’t you? My Dad says you’re a big deal.”

Barry shook his head. “I teach and write about economics, not the sexiest of subjects. But for some reason that crap is popular now. Diana, she could have had anyone. Somebody a lot more interesting than me. I’ve spent so much time running around the country, pontificating, when I could have been home with her. Maybe if I’d been….” Barry stared out the window.

At Goodwill Terence unloaded the boxes while Barry sat in the car, watching his wife’s life carted away. When Terence climbed back behind the wheel Barry was attempting to fire the last bit of roach with the Audi’s cigarette lighter, yelping as he seared his index finger. As they drove up Vista Drive, Barry suddenly yelled in anger as they neared Washington Park. “Look. Look at that goddamn thing,” pointing at a cell phone tower peeking out the trees. “Drive towards that.”

“Mr. Wells, I think we should go home,” Terence protested. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re pretty fucked up. You should take a nap.”

“No, I want to see that thing. The tower that killed my wife.” Barry grabbed at the wheel.

Terence grimaced, but veered into the park. At the top of the hill he pulled to the curb, Barry jumping out, half running, half stumbling, up the green incline, one hand grasping the remainders from the six-pack. He tripped every few feet, finally reaching the base of the tower. The metal structure was at least twenty feet in diameter, and Barry grabbed a post, shaking it violently.

“Aw, Mr. Wells, that won’t do anything, and you could hurt yourself,” Terence said, reaching for his arm.

Barry continued to assault the post. “I need to blow this fucking thing up. Maybe drive my car into it, before it kills someone else.”

“C’mon, Mr. Wells. That won’t do anything, there are hundreds of towers. People will still talk on their cell phones. You can’t stop that.”

Terence popped another beer, handed it to Barry, and sat down next to him. “Yeah, me too, Mr. Wells. I mean, I sure didn’t know her like you, but I was around her my whole life. She’d invite me in sometimes after I finished the lawn. Give me cookies or a sandwich. We’d talk. I could tell her anything. She gave good advice. She loved you, always talked about how smart you were.”

Barry took another swig. “I didn’t know you two had a relationship.”

Terence nodded. “She said you were a big thinker. A genius. That your head was always wrapped around numbers and formulas. Hope you don’t mind me saying, but I kinda had a crush on her. Not like you should be jealous. I know she just thought of me as a kid, but…..I could see how you’d love her.” Terence stared between his knees, voice cracking. “I thought she was the kind of woman I’d want to marry. Smart, pretty, and….”

Barry put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and they sat silent for a moment.

“Did you know she really liked to play basketball? Terence said. “She’d come out to the driveway and we’d play HORSE.”

“Diana played basketball? No, I did not know that,” Barry smiled in surprise.

“She did, and she was pretty good,” Terence said. “She used to beat me, at least until I got bigger. I even made a video of her playing a few weeks ago.”

Barry cocked his head. “You have a video of her?”

Terence reached into his pocket and brought out a phone. “Yeah, right here.”

Barry froze, staring at the phone. “You could show it to me right now?”

“Sure.” Terence handed it to him. Diana was dressed in gardening shorts and a Blazers cap, ponytail dropping out the back. Barry brought the phone closer.

“OK, Terence,” Diana laughed, “prepare to be thoroughly trounced,” as she sunk an easy layup. “That’s what we call H,” Diana doing an animated jig. Barry watched as she worked her way around the driveway. “There’s an O and an R,” kidding Terence as she made the next two shots, and merrily screaming when she missed the third. “Mulligan,” she shouted as Terence protested off-camera. Finally, Diana turned and pointed a finger. “So young man, study this carefully, and someday you might have an A-game too.”

Barry gasped as it ended, then hit the play button again. He sat transfixed, the phone in both hands, watching it over and over. His fingers traced the smooth back of the device as he found the switch to bring it to full volume, cradling it as if it were a fragile jewel, a damn cell phone, now the most important object in the world.

A man comes to town. He wears spit-shined shoes and a lime-green coat. His hair is all slicked, and there’s a pack on his shoulders. He looks bright and flashy, like a light bulb. I see him walking down the road, the noon sun sizzling on his head, with his feet raising little clouds of dust.

It’s a midsummer inferno outside, and all the windows in our house are open. I’m lying on the grass on our front lawn, Hector at my side, just lazing around. It’s too hot to think, much less do anything. Inside, somewhere in the dim swelter, mama’s cleaning pots and pans.

The man stops at a bakery window and looks in at a loaf baking in the oven. They have it on a rack in there, and it’s going around and around like a little white planet. When he sees it he whips off his spectacles and cleans them on his shirt cuff, and a greedy look gets on his face.

After he’s stared for a while he moves on, and the first thing he does is come towards my house. He walks down the front path, and I can tell he’s nervous because he’s fussing with his hair and sniffing his breath and rubbing the sweat off his forehead. He looks at me, lying on my back in the middle of the lawn, chewing grass, and I look back at him. At my side, Hector sits up and starts growling. The man gets to my front door and knocks. No reply. He knocks again. Still nothing. Bang! Bang! Bang! Finally, mama answers.

As soon as the door swings open, the man switches on his smile. He straightens up and starts speaking real fast, like he’s looking to win a race.

“Good afternoon, Madame!” he says. “May I say what a fine garden you have. Is that lilac I smell?”

“What do you want?” mama asks guardedly.

“May I interest you in a rare, genuine, one-hundred-percent authentic first issue of The Gardener’s Chronicle, a miraculous publication?”

“You’re a salesman?” mama interrupts.

“An entrepreneur, Madame,” the salesman replies with pride.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t read gardening magazines.”

“Of course, of course. Perhaps you would care instead for an issue of The Owl, a journal containing the most enlightening, in-depth, one-of-a-kind articles on today’s political issues?”

“I don’t read political magazines either. I already know which way to vote. I’m a Farmer-Laborist.”

“And a credit to your country, Madame,” bursts out the salesman, beginning to sweat now. “But surely, surely you’ll want to take advantage of the enormous – nay, the innumerable – benefits that come from purchasing the last, original edition of The Weekly Recorder?”

“Sorry,” says mama, and she shuts the door. For a moment the salesman just stands there, stunned. Then he turns around and walks back to the main road. I raise my head as he goes by. He stares at me. I stare at him. Hector barks. The salesman moves on.

When he’s back on the main road, he pauses again to look in the bakery window. The loaf is beautiful and gold and brown now. It’s glowing red from the heat. The salesman runs his hands through his hair looking at it, and then goes up to the house next door. When he knocks, Mrs. Trencher answers the door in her rough apron. The salesman runs through his list of magazines, but she won’t buy a thing. She just stands there, looking at him suspiciously and shaking her head. Finally, with his stock exhausted, the salesman resorts to his super weapon.

“But surely, Madame,” he cries, “surely you’ll want to purchase The Christian Chronicle, the best spiritual publication in the country, on sale at the moment for a single penny?”

“I don’t read religious magazines,” Mrs. Trencher sniffs. “I have the Bible for that.” And she closes the door. It’s much the same with every other house he tries. Slam. Crash. The snick of locks fitting into place. Door after door is whisked shut in his face. Some people apologize and take a long time explaining that they just don’t have time during the day to read magazines. Others aren’t so polite. Old Mr. Willoughby chases him off with an army carbine.

The salesman works his way all the way down the road on one side, knocking on every door, and then back up again on the other. He keeps at it until sunset, when the crickets are coming out and the wind is picking up and all the clouds are red. Finally, he goes back and enters the bakery. I want to see what happens, so I follow him in and loiter in a corner, listening.

“Can I get you something, friend?” the baker asks in a friendly way.

“That loaf in the window, please,” says the salesman.

“Good choice.” The baker takes the loaf off the rack and wraps it in clean brown paper. “Five cents, please.”

The salesman licks his lips. “Look here, friend,” he says, “I don’t have any money to give you, but I can offer you a super-rare, extra-excellent special edition of the New York Magazine and General Repository of Useful Knowledge.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” says the baker, clutching the loaf to his chest. “And you can leave right now if you don’t have money. Go on. Out.”

Flushed, the salesman leaves, the copy of the New York Magazine still clutched in his fist. The baker is in a bad mood after that. He starts rattling pans and washing dishes, muttering to himself about freeloaders. I linger in the bakery for another minute, using my allowance to make a quick purchase, and then I go back outside.

It’s getting dark now in the street, and the stars are coming out. The salesman is some ways from the road, in a little grassy place, sitting on a tree stump with his pack at his feet. He has his head in his hands and he doesn’t seem to be doing anything. A gang of kids comes along and sees him. They laugh at him and get hold of his pack and start tearing it apart, scattering magazines like strands of milkweed. He gives a yell and grabs it back.

“Shoo!” he cries, shaking his fist. “Git! Scram!” And he disperses them with a few kicks, but they still laugh and throw stones at him, and then they snatch up some of his belongings and run away. Tenderly, the salesman gets down on his hands and knees and gathers up the rest of the magazines, stowing them in his pack even though they’re crumpled. He doesn’t look bright or flashy anymore. Now he looks like his magazines. His hair is sticking up, his green coat is splattered with mud, and he has dust on his cheeks.

Cautiously, I approach him, holding the bulky package concealed under my arm. After a moment, he glances up and sees me. “Shoo!” he cries. He flutters his hands at me and goes back to gathering magazines. I don’t leave. I stay exactly where I am. He looks up again a few moments later. “Git!” he says. And then, a few moments after that, “Scram!” And after that, “Beat it!”

Finally, I hold out the package I’ve been concealing. When he sees it, he stops moving. He stares at it. He stares at me.

“What do you want?” he asks.

I point at the magazine in his hand. He looks at it himself, but he doesn’t seem to believe it. He frowns. “This?” he demands, holding it up.

I nod. The salesman looks at the package again. The old hungry expression comes over his face, but now it’s all mixed and muddied up with something else.

“You really want it?” he asks, his voice trembling. I nod.

He gives me the magazine. I give him the package.

Neither of us speaks a word after that. I just strike off down the road, heading for my house. The salesman stays where he is, both arms wrapped around his prize, a strange expression on his face. When I look back, he’s still sitting there, a ragged rooster with a big brown egg.

Oh, but the physicality of my thinking is chaotic. Outside of my apartment someone is walking up the stairs. I sometimes walk up those stairs and stumble. But I wasn’t always like this.

Nonono.

I’m gonna write the letter. I’m sorry for not knowing if I loved you. Because things get confusing and my mind’s fucked up. The tears don’t let me write. If what matters are my actions then I never loved you. But it’s the world—this fucked up world; like a mind-rape.

Right now someone is falling in love with someone that will never love them back. Someone just found out their mother has cancer. Someone is losing a job. Someone is killing a baby they never wanted. Someone is having sex at a bar. Someone’s daughter is crying. I can feel the world around me. So much pain. Everything, everywhere. Staring. Accusing. In the walls, liquifying through the streets.

The bottle’s in the floor. The wine is going to leave a stain. If you were here you would clean it up. It’s not my fault. They stare. Or carefully not stare. I want you to regret me. (I’d regret me). This hybrid of thoughts and actions and sicknesses and desires and a self-destructive mind accompanied with an ever-changing personality.

You need to know that that night wasn’t my best. Pills seemed peaceful. But I didn’t do it right. So no, you could say I never loved you. Yes, I didn’t. Maybe I am too selfish to love. There was always too much pressure from you; to love, to be in a specific way. I never liked that part of you.

A girl just fell outside. Should I feel bad for her? Feel sorry, only by the mere appearance of innocence? Why is it that we can’t accept that humans are predesigned to do evil? Well, to be selfish, which in a community, is evil. Yet, when faced with a deathly situation, we’ll always think about ourselves. Blood in my nails from scratching too hard. Instinct will always push us to survive. And instinct is nature, nature is good. Therefore, Love is evil? Love goes beyond nature, it Transcends. That’s it. I can’t love you because I’m selfish, and selfish is good. Yes, I’m good. It’s not my fault.

Today I saw someone that looked like you. He stared at me and gave me a little smile. The smile people give when they remember something. I like to think he was you. Nonono, he was you. That’s why today I’m feeling somewhat good, Yes. That would have been the last time we ever saw each other; we didn’t know that yet. But it’s fine, because you smiled.

The girl is still crying. Maybe life doesn’t care for things like innocence.

Tonight I will do it. Because it was hard. Everything, everywhere. I wanted—demanded joy—but rarely found it. I do, I do. Come, like the song. How was it called? The one we used to hear. That’s it. I’m good. Most of the times. I’m sorry for that; for all the horrible things I did. For the times I cheated; for that time I said you almost never looked pretty (which you do, really, most of the times. Nono, always, yes, you always do. Most of the times you always look pretty); for never giving you a real place in my life; for treating you good before sex; for not having any love to give. Why didn’t I have any love? Oh, The tears The tears, they come. Don’t know why I did it—I knew it hurt you. IknewIknew.

The wind and the trees, and the plop-plop-plop from the notRain. The water is getting inside, and I have to swim fast. Fast, get to the ocean. Nonono, the sand. The moon. Get there. Have to finish, quick. The pen? When I think of happiness, I think of a kiss we once had—not the first nor the last—just one I remember the most. You were there, over that blue wall, and I was here on this stubborn bed (Shit, my pupils are closing: Openopen) you saw how I smiled and gazed away. You came, hugged me; I rolled over, laughed, told you I was fine. “Didn’t ask if you weren’t,” You held me tight and the hug lingered. Started to cry. Oh, thetears. Maybe the water comes from those, or this; from everything that happened… The warmth of your chest against my back. I never explained, you never asked. I turned around and kissed you. I remember thinking of that moment as the beginning of happiness, not appreciating that it was happiness itself. A few weeks later I tried to die.

I should change the lightbulb, because its starting to do the same inconstant noise it did the last time. Pzzzztpztpzzzzzzt. Oh, the sound. Stop it. But it wasn’t my fault, I swear. Our love was made out of the smallest of things. The lightbulb, hands, that night at the concert, the kiss, the way you gazed at me when I was about to get inside of you, the day you showed me your high school, the poems, the way our teeth crashed while kissing. Half an orange, half the pills. I can hear music, somewhere.

The pen is too heavy: trying to write with just thoughts. The only ink I have is the ink from my veins. It smells like chlorine and tobacco and wine and sweat in here. Everything, everywhere. I miss your smell of beer and your handsome hands; the taste from your chest. My jaw is tight and it hurts. Quick. Bones made of stone. ShutthefuckupShutthefuckupShutthefuckup. Why can’t I be like other people? Why do I feel so much and at the same time have an infatuation with the inability to feel? Whywhyfuckwhy? I want you to know that I’ll miss you. I know how I thought missing someone was overrated, but I don’t… It’s just that I never had someone to miss, I guess. NowyouNowyou. There was an animal, somewhere in there, in that vast space—the ocean. Or a thing. Drowning? Escaping? You’re everyone in your dreams. What? Am I him too? Or it, as I said, it could be a thing. I’m following it, but am I also the thing I’m following? Am I escaping—want to escape?

Haven’t had anything, ever, give me back that moment. Take me, if only as soul; haven’t had anything; wasn’t my fault. I swear, wasn’t always like this. Please, you hear me? I’llgoI’llgo. Swim down; at the bottom of it all, there it is. I see it, almost. Push me a little, before it goes—before it gets deeper. Life is all about finding the right person to think while dying. Your mere touch. The contrast between the geography of your being and the anatomy of your soul. Don’t ever create a new monotony. It’s like I have planets in my chest. Growing. So much, So fuckingmuch. Open, swallow. Do it. You there? After it all, you still loved me. You understood, they were the ones to blame. NotmeNeverme. You knew I never wanted to hurt you. Thank you for that. The stretching, the drying.

Crust in bluered veins: the fucking color of Goodbye—The You in us, The Us in me.

That said, That said. Hug, kiss, I won’t even explain. Theletter. Yes, theletter. You haven’t saved me. Where are you? Have I been writing at all? Yesyesyes. I’m not even scared. I wonder how long it will take for anyone to notice I’m dead. The overlapping, the wholesomeness. All I want is sleep. SleepStop. All. Not the voices, but all. Floating, park, citylights, fastfire. Staring at silver hair: clouds wrapping the world. Spreading. Pulling. Rings of golden dust. Blood toosour, pills toowet.

I’ll come back. Tell you what I’ve seen.

I know, but I want to stop now. Will you be quiet? I’ll never get there. I have to get there. Have to… Oceanspace: the ending: a line, falling sand.

Stardust,

Sundust.

Have it; too small, too slick.

I want to keep… The noises don’t let me. Shutthefuckup. I feel it. Slipping through my fingers. Stretching. ImplodingExploding. The Legeyes with the tonguepalms and the lungnose, all of me in one: melting, pouring through the universe. Unfolding.